Week 6 is statistically tied for having the second most vicious cut of the season. It begins with nine contestants and ends with six, meaning a full 33% of the guys are cut. Week 1 is occasionally worse, but this year there were only 28 contestants, so the cut was a mere 25%. After that, Week 2 is 14%, Week 3 is 17%, Week 4 is 20%, Week 5 is 25%, and Week 8 is 25%. Weeks 7 and 9 are tied with 6 at 33%, but, of course, Week 10 takes the cake as 50% of the contestants are kicked off (it’s just the runner-up, but it’s still sad). And yet even though this was the biggest cut we have seen so far this season, the end result was entirely predictable.

Commentary

Chris began this week in Richmond, Virginia by stating that he would rather have a one-on-one or a two-on-one than be designated to the group date. If you take the statistics of that at face value, everyone can see that he is wrong. A 50% chance at a rose is worse than a 67% chance at a rose. Even if you assume that the two people getting one-on-ones automatically get roses, he still has a 57% at a rose.

But Chris put himself in an intriguing predicament last week. Everyone can see that he is on the outs, so he had to make a bold move to stay alive. He probably looked around and saw that he was near the back of the pack and, if the status quo remained the same, he would have well under a 50% chance of getting a rose, so taking a chance on a two-on-one, where he would have time to shift the status quo, was a decent bet. Unfortunately for him, he never got the chance, but he definitely took as many other chances as he possibly could to climb out of the hole he had dug for himself.

It was telling last season that Becca and Ari always had the dates where they would just wander around the city together and still have a good time. Putting Ari’s fuckboiness aside, Becca won the competition because they could just be themselves together wherever they went. Now Jason is the one just meandering through towns with Becca and they are doing it right. And they’re taking public transportation together for goodness sake. If that doesn’t say romantic, I clearly don’t know what does.

It’s good that Becca let Jason see his friends now, because it’s going to be a while before he sees them again. He is in this one for the long haul. It’s hard to picture any of the other contestants’ friends showing up and being such effective advocates. I mean could you imagine any of Garrett’s fuck head friends from Reno or Colton’s football goons having a positive impact on Becca? No. Jason’s the real deal.

I wasn’t sure where Jason was going with the story about his grandmother other than it just being a sad story, but him concluding with the meaning of it all—“It made me realize I can’t take any moment for granted”—showed a level of emotional intelligence that the rest of these guys haven’t displayed. As a result, he is the first person that Becca has really opened up to about her father’s passing.

And at the end of their first date, she said that she was falling for him.

Now we turn to the Beccalection and what a timely way to shit on American history. A reality TV star is in the White House, so why don’t we put a reality TV show fake debate on the steps of one of the most historic buildings in the country. And even Ralph fucking Northam showed up for the festivities. That’s alright; he’s a Democratic and he knows where Becca stands.

Chris spent the debate throwing around racist dog-whistles about Lincoln in the former capital of the confederacy, so that was cute. Then at the cocktail party he told Becca that he feels hurt when people say they feel threatened by him, which is the rhetorical equivalent of a racist saying they feel hurt when they’re called a racist. He’s from Orlando, Florida so how much can we really expect out of him.

Let’s leave Chris alone one more time as we turn to Leo. Jason reading Leo’s date card to Leo when Leo and Jason were the only ones in the whole hotel room was the cutest thing of all time. I passed away briefly in the moment.

This is the first one-on-one of the season where the odds were stacked against the guy. Colton last week and Jason this week both had a solid foundation that they could build off of. Not only did Leo not have that foundation, but there are literally fewer spots left remaining for frontrunners in Becca’s heart. And add onto all that the drama from the day before weighing Becca down and Leo needed to do backflips in order to turn things around. Thank God Leo is a stuntman.

Leo telling Becca that he would be hers in the “real world” is one of the only acknowledgements of that elephant-in-the-room difference between the real and bachelor worlds we have seen on the show. He openly discusses the absurdity of the process in such a refreshing way all while staking his claim as a legitimate contender. The ship was sailing away from him from the beginning and he turned that thing around like a goddamn tugboat.

Chris’s exit and the subsequent rose ceremony were entirely uneventful. Chris and Lincoln were on their way out and it’s remarkable that Connor I’m-gonna-throw-this-framed-picture-into-the-pool-on-the-second-episode-because-I’m-that-much-of-an-asshole made it to the Top 9. I even called the order in which the contestants would be picked before the ceremony started: Garrett, Colton, Wills. It was too easy. We all agree on the Top 5 and Leo was the only outlier, so when he got the rose, the Top 6 was set in stone.

Scoring

Kristina, Caitlyn, Doug, and Justice all had perfect weeks. Kristina (204) is clearly the team to beat as she sits 11 points ahead of the second place bracket. Bonnie’s (193) oracle vision slipped up enough to let Lincoln into her Top 6, though she maintained second place. Justice (192) is now just one point behind Bonnie and Doug (190) is two points behind Justice, which rounds out those in legitimate competition for the championship.

Caitlyn (183) jumped way ahead of Jenny to take the lead in the second tier of brackets. Kelsey (174) also jumped Jenny despite having Ryan held-over on her bracket. Jenny (173) threw away another opportunity by not replacing either David or Ryan in her Top 6, leaving her deep in seventh place.

I didn’t mention PPR or HPS at all this week because every single one of us has a fully-intact Final Four and beyond, which is truly remarkable. We crowded our brackets like crazy and we are still all correct thus far. All of us, that is, except for Danica Martino. You know who Danica put in the Top 3? (Other than “Willis” of course.) Flat-Earth Lincoln. I’ll give Danica a break on not knowing that he’s been convicted of assault, but Lincoln’s biography is literally just a list of places he’s lived and the fact that he’s named after our sixteenth president. There are presumably no interesting facts about him other than that. Congratulations, Danica. At 48 points behind Kristina and 17 points behind Jenny, she has again found her way into last place likely for the remainder of the season.